Convicted! You are Going to Prison

By James J. Dollar

My book is a way to share my personal experiences of being incarcerated for 45 years. I have been through a lot inside prison. It has made me feel very rejected and disposable by my entire human family for me to be caged up like this for so long. I'm a person and I have feelings and potential. I can't rewind and take back what I I get wet-eyed when I see the little children missing an arm or leg on Shriner's Hospital tv commercials. I call that 'peeliing onions'. My heart is moved by broken love stories on tv and by sad occurances such as a buddy losing a mother or father while in here with me. So I know I am not a monster or a completely defective man with no reason for anyone to try to salvage me. I have been blessed to get my GED, a bachelor's degree in communications with honors, many Micrsoft expert level certifications, and completion of all the Department of Corrections instructions. While being incarcerated, I haven't just sat in my cell building resentment and hatred because my human family seems not to want me to be a member.
America's Prison System has quietly succumbed to industry interests. There are so many for-profit companies involved now. Medical for prisons is by for-profit companies. Food s by Aramark or some other huge for profit company. Transport of inmates are by for-profit companies. Telephone service and now email messaging service is handled by for-profit companies. Inmate commissary is done by for-profit companies. The point of my telling you this is because for these companies to do well on their bottom lines the prison beds MUST be filled. Offenders must continue to offend and to create victims of crime indefinitely into the future. If ever there was a time when society was being protected by our Justice and prison systems in America that time has long passed. Prisoners are treated in a manner now which ensures they will reoffend and at a minimum are released unprepared to conduct themselves as functioning members of a community. You might hate offenders and feel they must make different decisions. This is often defeated by the childhood and upbringing the offender had. Once a person has succumbed to a negative or bad beginning as a child there is a second opportunity to correct this individual. This opportunity comes from the time the individual is separated from the community. It is an opportunity that is used for just the opposite purpose. Time in prison serves to further one's sense of outcast and rejection by their community. The interests that need the beds full spend a lot of money keeping the focus and public opinion on punishing an offender. The person released is invariably more anti-community than when locked up. The ultimate problem with all of this is the future victims of crime. The system which the public believes is beneficial and protective is actually a cooperating partner in every crime committed by someone who has been imprisoned and released. This beast of a system has a life of its own and I watch it grow more violent and destructive every day. If you or your loved ones are facing the grim prospect of doing time I've written this book to help you prepare, cope, and hopefully survive this ordeal. When you are done just focus on making the changes which keep you from ever returning.

• Language: English
• Publisher: James J. Dollar
• Release date: Dec 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005655655

James J. Dollar

I write books about prison from prison. I have a book about my personal journey of 45 years in this system which fails to use the time of incarceration to form offenders into better community members. Continuing to focus on punishment is only going to create future victims of crime. I write about the stories of those who have interesting lives before coming to prison. I also have been married to a wonderful woman for the past 21 years of this time. She has taught me so much. I plan to write about prison romance and the high cost folks on the street who love prisoners pay for that. I have a manuscript partially finished about doing time in the 1960's in one of the old castle-like prisons in West Virginia. I came to prison at 23 years old and am now 66. I messed up my life. I also want to attend to victims of crime. People should be told there are prisoners who actually understand the damage done and the need for someone to apologize.

Book preview

CONVICTED

So You are Going to Prison

By

James J. Dollar

Copyright 2023

Second Edition

Table of Contents

Forward - Anxiety and Threat

Chapter One - Prison Life

Chapter Two - Present Day

Chapter Three - 'The White Elephant'-Reidsville State Prison

Chapter Four- Prison Life Actually Creates Future Crime Victims

Chapter Five - Vengeance or Correction?

Chapter Six - Relationships with Family from Prison

Chapter Seven - Romantic Relationships from Prison

Chapter Eight - Living Without a Purpose

Chapter Nine - Is There a Way Out for Me?

Chapter Ten - How Did I Get Here?

Chapter Eleven - How I Began: Son of Carnival Workers

Chapter Twelve - Delby Faye - Sister or Not?

Chapter Thirteen - Growing up a Figerole

Chapter Fourteen - Granny and Poppa

Chapter Fifteen - Mom's Whippings-The Center of my Young Life

Chapter Sixteen - Can I Please Just Get Out of Prison Before I Die?

Excerpt From James J. Dollar's Next Title

Epilogue - More to Say

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Forward

Anxiety and Threat

When the gavel of the judge drops-it reveals itself to you for the first time. Going through the arrest and county jail and court appearances you have felt anxiety but not the constant and never absent presence of it like it comes when you have been sentenced. All hope of a different outcome is gone now. Once the judge drops the gavel on your conviction a sense of anxiety and threat is from then on a constant part of who you now are and what you know. Since my sentencing in 1980 my life has been consumed by anxiety and threat.

In prison there is always the looming tenseness of potential violence and this creates a never-ending static crackling of danger which keeps a palpable fog of insecurity thick and enveloping about you. That fog never lifts, never fades. It may shift and change shape from time to time, but like many prisoners I am constantly plagued by the negative potential in what surrounds me. The threats that should be easy to expect or anticipate by administrators peak my anxiety the most because I've seen few administrations really focused on protecting or rehabilitating prisoners. Not only do administrations fail to establish policies, in my own experience, to thwart the easily identifiable threats but I've seen staff manipulate these threats in pretty diabolical ways. I saw a black female Sergeant named Kaplan get mad cause a frustrated white prisoner called her a bitch and search six lockers of high ranking Blood gang members. This caused the easily foreseen response of the prisoners.When she put their cell phones and cologne and weed or whatever else at risk then when she left the bloods gave the white guy a severe beating for 'causing' them to be searched.

What others may do can consume any one with an anxiety. There is nothing imagined about the vulnerability people have in the Georgia state prisons currently. You really don't get to fee safe anymore once you have experienced the extremes men can reach when supervision is not adequate. I've seen a man decimate his best friend and sit down in his blood and eat a nutty bar waiting for the guards to come take him to seg. You aren't simply anxious about what might be done to you but you are anxious about what you might have to do to someone else. Your stay in prison could be extended based on someone else’s actions and your need to defend yourself against those actions. Sometimes the only possible defense if to be on the offense. To attack the head of the beast before all the claws and teeth are brought into play.

Every day the parole board denies guys from having a chance at freedom because they caught a fighting or even a stabbing charge. Defending yourself isn't taken into account. They'll tell you that you could have chosen to tell the administration or the guards. Sounds good but this isn't true. They know it too. If I were told by someone he was going to get me in here I can't know what that really means. It could mean we're about to fist fight but it could also mean I'd be confronted by several people armed with homemade shanks. If I go to the administration for help I'm immediately taken out of the situation and locked into 23 hour segregation status. This still won't protect me. There's been as many killings happen IN the protective custody and lockups of Georgia prisons as there have been in general population. Many of the staff who are supposed to be protecting you in such a situation will out you. They let wanting to be cool with the gang leaders mean more than their sworn duty. These guards truthfully will put your name out as a 'snitch'. I have been in prison too long to suggest snitching or to approve of it so don't misunderstand what I am saying here. I'm making the point there is not any safe way for anyone to ever do what the parole board tries to pretend you could have chosen to do.

One thing's for sure, though, if you don't act first in this situation when you know you might have to survive an attack by more than one person then you are certain to be on their terms when the conflict does occur. Georgia prisons are just so very dangerous and violent. They are also run down and decrepit as well as being mismanaged but look at the Georgia Department of Corrections website and it will make you mad cause you will think we are being coddled and treated with all these magnificent programs and benefits. You will be told without shame that the Georgia prison system is about keeping the offenders and the communities safer but this is also propaganda. Just continue reading this book and my other writings and you will see how empty this claim really is. You can't report the threat and not take on the violent conflict because you will be labeled a rat and the administrations can't protect you. Once labeled you are targeted by not only the one you had the problem with but now you are fair game for any 'convict' system-wide. You are in such a box then cause the parole board won't let you have your freedom cause of any charges you might have to incur just to keep breathing. All of this while being held in a place where you can't leave from.

Knowing this causes a lot of anxiety. These types of threats are compounded by the knowledge that the medical care is not adequate either. Being taken care of by for-profit medical providers means the level of bare minimum care could result in you get worse instead of better. Like everything else based on making profit cutting costs is paramount. A point that most people establishing operational policies either over look, or do not care enough to consider, because it does not affect them personally. There is no getting around why most of us are in this system but does that mean we should be handled as if we are a lesser being because we make a mistake within our lifetime. We were sent here (I hope there are some who adhere to this belief still) to learn a lesson from our mistakes and come out a better person. In most cases, that is the opposite of what happens due to the cultural shipwreck of the prison system itself.

The threats of prison are not all just about violence though there is so much more violence now than at any time I have experienced. When in the system stepping out of your own desperate frustrations to accommodate your relationships and friendships outside those walls can be very difficult. It creates a crack in the bridge that connects them with their prisoner loved one, and in most cases, that crack becomes a gap that is too big to hop over and too hard to repair. Prison rules about contact and visits are ostensibly designed for 'security' reasons but actually are very effective at destroying relationships between prisoners and their loved ones. Parents get torn from their children, significant others or spouses from their partners, and relatives from their relatives.

When you are sentenced, there is an automatic essence, a stigma that sticks to you like fly paper. Yes, in my own personal instance I handled a situation inappropriately, to put it mildly, which caused me to be in here, and I'm not excusing myself for it, but the reality is these walls and fences kill your relationships outside them. This makes it even harder to integrate back into society and weighs on your already frazzled mental state while trying to change and rehabilitate yourself. The mental aspect of prison l is certainly a huge factor in how someone can or cannot recoup, recover and reintegrate themselves into their communities when they are released. It is a failed system because the time offenders are locked up is wasted. For some inmates, they are already here because they have a psychological disorder, and being in the system only amplifies those problems. Most state DOC's (Department of Corrections) have token programs with great titles but primarily purposed to obtain federal funding. There can be no valid claims that prisons in America focus resources on making prisoners more capable as community members.

These aren't all the threats you feel hanging over you day in and day out. There are more subtle threats. These include, but aren't limited to, having no commissary money or not getting assigned to a decent housing unit. There is rarely an assigned bunk mate that you will get along with indefinitely. They do not house you based on the crime you commit, or based on mental stability, so every time your double cell has the other bed empty anxiety rises and creates an uneasy feeling in the pit of your stomach. Many subtle threats and anxieties are so constant the average prisoner would struggle to identify them. Nevertheless the effect of such continual anxiety sticks to you like the damp droplets of condensed fog.

Anxiety for people outside these walls is real as well. I do not belittle those struggles, but being shown the distinction of the complications of the outside world, and being held in a cage housed with violence as a daily way of life. Unlike someone struggling to find work outside these walls the anxieties within them are not escapable. I have no control over others actions or how someone reacts to situations bestowed upon them. The other inmates within these walls are more action than talking, in most cases, and those that do try to restrain from action are eventually short of patience so even they go to action pretty fast. In the free world there are far more opportunities to just get a little distance from an issue. Can't just leave from around a problem inside these fences,or worse, inside a prison dormitory. However when you go up for parole you will be denied based on being in that unavoidable situation.

This manuscript is written by a forty four year prisoner in America's for-profit incarceration industry. Several people who are knowledgeable in the publishing industry encouraged me to try to present both sides and not be too biased. I do have an understanding of the other side of the coin inasmuch as there is valid claim there should be a punishment element to America's response to breaking the law-but I'm not writing their story. I'm writing the story of how American incarceration serves the interests of the profiteers through the entrenched system which has evolved-rather than serving the interest of the people. In fact this system, unavoidably so in my opinion, is equally responsible for the fact that offenders who are released from prison often commit further crimes-as those recidivist prisoners are themselves.

For anyone who disagrees with this view it is based in the simple self-evident fact the system has total physical control of people for the duration of their sentences. Why is there so little emphasis on changing the minds while the physical body is warehoused? This is the one chance to make an offender into a community minded and productive member of society but the system instead focuses on punitive goals. In actual truth this system shares responsibility for all of those future crime victims. It is without defense that warehousing people around the worst of the criminal thinking and keeping them there longer than needed, to help correct them, is not going to make them care about their communities in the future. My perspective on this is integrated deeply into the pages of this book.

I am writing this book to help mothers, fathers, and others, whom are left behind when their loved one ends up incarcerated, to get more understanding of what they, and the one they worry about inside the prison, is actually trying to manage. The veil of what it is like inside a prison is a deliberately placed one. There is no prison administrator I've ever known who really wants the families and loved ones of the offenders in their prison to be actively trying to find out about how their prisoner relative is treated and housed. So many rules are in place. These rules are explained as control and monitoring of the offenders to keep the prison staff and prisoners safe. Although this might be a little true if the rules weren't so cherry-picked as to which are actually enforced-there is a lot in these same rules meant to gag and silence any outside concerns or interference. So I am writing to familiarize family members and loved ones outside of prison with what often happens inside. Just knowing more about it might help ease some of the worries a little for the offender's loved ones left behind on the streets. Prison is this way cause the public has been purposefully cultured by vested interests, and slimy, lazy, politicians, not to identify with the prisoners. Instead of being viewed as misguided and having made mistakes in judgement prisoners are seen as evil and deserving of the danger and the inhumane treatment they are receiving from the system.

Don't take the common position that prisoners have broken the law and so they deserve what they might receive while 'paying for their crime'. Nothing about my writing is intended to ignore the victims and the suffering brought on them by the actions of offenders. Victims SHOULD be the first party considered when we think of what is proper and appropriate as a response to crime. My point and everything I write about is simply to say that offenders are people too and that often salvaging them is not even on the agenda. I think it should be the second priority of the system to sincerely try to 'correct' the behavior of the offender.

I am also trying to show the offenders themselves how I managed this journey through the often dangerous environments they will be facing. Things have drastically changed through the four decades I've served, true enough, but there are many habitual and effective behavior models that can be previewed from this text.

I'd also like to reach any who are on the path to joining me in this waste of their lives. We have one single lifetime that we actually know belongs to us. Each of us has this single treasure of a life in a human body on this earth to do with as we are able. You must believe I look every single day at the wasteland I've made of my life with the most profound sense of regret and loss. Loss so prevalent it just sits on the edge of my prison bunk staring me in my face and makes me lower my face in shame. How could someone with a brain that ostensibly works as well as mine does have done this to himself? Nobody did this to me. I did this to me. My choices and impulsive acts which I could have restrained but chose not to did this to me. My problem isn't with my guilt or with the need for there to be an adequate response to offenders like I was. It's the kind of response I have such a problem with. The human warehouse of the prison system in America is sure enough becoming more and more a business entity that needs beds to be filled to keep shareholders happy...but it remains that I and everyone else made the choices which exposed us to becoming food for this beast of a system. I say this about myself but deep in my heart I know there were responsibilities I should have been owed as a child from parents I never chose to be born to as well as from the same society so easily condemning me now. The reality is that most people in prison should have been provided with far more support and care than they were afforded. Usually the childhood of the people housed in this nation's prisons is greatly responsible for the resulting adult who offends. We make our own choices but those are made from within the frame of reference and values we are taught while very young. Or were not taught cause we had parents who never were cared for by this society in a manner which equipped them to be good citizens or good parents. Where was society with their prison system when I was beaten and screamed at and forced to sit in a darkened bedroom while a drunken mother screamed accusations at my father? I had to choose someone to love and he didn't beat me quite as much as she did. When I ran away from home nine times and was always refused to tell on my folks because breaking up the hoe meant I would have been responsible for separating my brothers and sisters and their getting lost in the DFACS system? I learned from a young age that we would be taken and put in different locations and foster care. So time after time I was brought back by the authorities. Why didn't society have a way for a child like I was to tell and feel everyone would benefit from his doing so? How could society champion a system purporting to protect